Ludwig Grauert
Ludwig Clemens August Grauert was a German lawyer and business executive who served as a police official and as the state secretary in the Prussian and Reich Ministry of the Interior in Nazi Germany. He played a key role in purging the police of Nazi opponents, and in drafting the Reichstag Fire Decree. He resigned under pressure in 1936 and returned to executive positions in the private sector. Grauert also was an SS-Brigadeführer. As an Oberst in the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, he was the commander of an anti-aircraft regiment.
Early life
Grauert was born in Münster, attended Volksschule and the Realgymnasium there and attained his Abitur. He next studied law at the University of Münster and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He passed his Referendar examination in October 1913, and began employment as a law clerk at the Hamm Higher Regional Court. On the outbreak of the First World War, he entered the Imperial German Army in August 1914 and served on the front lines until March 1918, first with the 4th (Westphalian) Cuirassiers "von Driesen" and then, from August 1916, as a Leutnant with a machine gun company in the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment. From March 1918 until the end of the war in November, he trained as a pilot. Wounded four times, he received the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class and the Wound Badge in silver. Returning to civilian life after the war, he passed his Assessor exam in January 1921 and became a court assessor at the public prosecutor's offices in Münster and Bochum until 1923.Between 1923 and 1928, Grauert worked as the head of the property protection department of the Employers' Association of the lower Ruhr smelting works in Duisburg. In the years from 1928 to 1933, he was an executive board member and business manager of the Employers' Association of the northwestern group of German iron and steel industrialists in Düsseldorf. He unsuccessfully stood for election to the Reichstag for the Conservative [People's Party (Germany)|Conservative People's Party] in the 1930 German federal election. Grauert was one of the approximately two-dozen industrialists who attended the Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 with Adolf Hitler that raised over 2,000,000 Reichsmarks for the Nazi's upcoming Reichstag election campaign.
Nazi Party career
On 7 February 1933, Hermann Göring, then the Prussian Reichskommissar for Interior, appointed Grauert as head of the Prussian police department in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior as the successor to Erich Klausener. In this capacity, Grauert played a key role in purging the police of opponents of the Nazis in the months that followed and, on 22 February, he was promoted to ministerial director.On the night of the Reichstag fire of 27–28 February 1933, the Prussian police began rounding up dozens of Communist opponents of the regime. The next morning, at a meeting at the Prussian Interior Ministry, Grauert proposed the passing of an emergency decree against arson and acts of terrorism to provide legal cover for the mass arrests and to deal with further acts of violence. This proposal was expanded by Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick to apply to all of Germany by giving the Reich government the right to intervene in any German state that did not maintain order. Thus, Grauert's draft formed the basis for the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended many of the fundamental rights of the Weimar Republic, thereby eliminating the rule of law and establishing the basis of the Nazi dictatorship.
On 11 April 1933, Göring became the Prussian minister president and promoted Grauert to state secretary in the Prussian Interior Ministry, while the office of ministerial director passed to Kurt Daluege. On 1 May 1933, Grauert joined the Nazi Party and he joined the Schutzstaffel on 2 June 1933 with the rank of SS-Oberführer. On 22 June 1933, as state secretary, Grauert issued the orders for the establishment of the Börgermoor concentration camp where hundreds of the regime's opponents were incarcerated. On 11 July 1933, Göring appointed Grauert to the recently reconstituted Prussian State Council. On 2 October 1933, he became a founding member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law and he was made chairman of its Committee on Police Law. When the Prussian Interior Ministry was merged with the Reich Interior Ministry under Frick on 1 November 1934, Grauert remained a state secretary in the combined ministry. On 20 April 1935 he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer.